Olof Broström

“Olof Broström possesses a desire to capture and encapsulate time, to be able to freeze parts of an eternal axis of time and make use of the information therein for something else. By documenting natural processes with time-lapse photography, he has tried to show the readability of the movement of clouds, the degradability of spaghetti, or the instant of the appearance of the northern lights of Norrland. He also creates automatic drawing machines, small robots that he employs in order to draw sketches of analog phenomena. The autonomous drawing machines are all built by hand with an assiduousness that testifies to a great familiarity with crafts. Often, Olof Broström uses already existing constructions, for example cleaning robots or radio-controlled toy cars, as the building blocks for a robot. Then he gives them the characteristics they need in order to be able do a sketch, by connecting various pens and nibs to their bodies. They are refined at every round that Olof Broström goes with them, the studio is filled to the brim with small gadgets, motors, nuts, and tools.The fan is one of the strangest yet one of the most natural inventions in existence. It is nothing other than a wind instrument . In many ways it is emblematic of the inventions that Olof Broström himself builds. It is simple, refined, and reveals something already present, a kind of accentuation, the difference being the sphere in which the byproducts are created: the byproducts of the fan, like much of Broström’s art, are ultimately the same as those that nature creates with the same process. Broström uses, instead, information in order to create art.

The drawings made by the machines are monotonous and impressive. Monochromatic, the various formations occupy their space on the sheet of paper. They show the chaos, the dissolution and transmission – not simply the transmission of graphite and ink to paper, but also that of chance to consistency, or idea to realization. Attentively, the eye follows and sees the impressions of the pen or the pens, measures, calculates, and computes the pressure or the time and speed of the drawing machine.” – Erik Berg